


If You Mean It, Show It, Don't Say It

by YellowWomanontheBrink



Series: Community: Norsekink [3]
Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Bullying, Community: norsekink, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2017-05-28
Packaged: 2018-11-06 03:51:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11028039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YellowWomanontheBrink/pseuds/YellowWomanontheBrink
Summary: How Loki met Sigyn, and tried and failed to woo her.Follow-up to "You Didn't Think About It Like That, Did You?"





	If You Mean It, Show It, Don't Say It

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BlackburnTheFox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackburnTheFox/gifts), [moonship](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonship/gifts).



> I started writing this about a year ago and thought I'd post it now because it's just been languishing in my enormous mountain of drafts. I quite like it, and I have another snippet half written about these two I'll eventually post as well. 
> 
> This is Loki and Sigyn from very young childhood (7-8) to that awkward age we all like to pretend didn't happen but secretly know did. (cough13-14cough)

It was said that the second prince of Asgard spent too much of his time hiding in his mother’s skirts. Quite the contrary, he spent as little time with Frigga as he did with Odin. When he hung around the halls of Fensalir, he sought not his mother, as he had as a desperate little boy, but a girl he had long since been acquainted. 

 

The halls of Fensalir were closed to all of the aesir; only women, the asynja among the highest of the high were permitted entry. Occasionally a young boy was allowed to be there; after all, a woman had to suckle and sometimes they had not a nurse to watch their errant child, but boy-children were carried on the hip, so as not to sully the cold marble floors with their mannish feet. 

 

Such tradition was hardly a deterrent for Loki. Even as a young boy, gangly and gentle, he snuck into the forbidden halls in Gladsheim without a qualm. As he grew older, the punishment for trespass became more and more severe. 

 

Much to the chagrin of his mother, and the delight of the gossips, for whom Loki was a favorite subject, this did not keep him from intruding on the sanction of women. Instead, he simply used his curious talent and...blended in. His affinity for chaos insured that with a subtle employment of his magic, then untrained, now expertly used, he would never be found by a passerby servant. 

 

When Loki walked through the great doors of Fensalir, he walked unaccosted, for at that moment, he was a she. She was thin and adolescent, much as she was as a boy, in a dramatic, flowing, unforgettable type of gown that would have made Freyja cringe and lust for it simultaneously. On anyone else it would have overwhelmed the youthful figure. Curiously, on Lady Loki, it worked. Chance was most often in her favor. 

 

She strode through the open walls and gardens of the perpetual spring atmosphere, wrinkling her nose at the starchy scent of fresh blooming flowers. It was the middle of  Mörsugur; in every place Loki had ever snuck off to besides Asgard the bite of bitter winter had snapped at his nose and reddened his cheeks. Having just returned from Alfheim, where the snow glittered pale purple on the plains and the snap of winter would be enough to cow even Thor, the change was disconcerting.

 

Her thoughts turned to the satchel in the hidden pocket she’d woven into the fabric of her mantle. Inside it was a gift she’d gone to high hell for— she’d only ever expend so much effort for her best and only friend. 

 

And thus, the true reason for her expenditure was made clear. Loki truly cared nor for women’s gossip or their business (though he did enjoy weaving and embroidery and knitting) but Sigyn Lofndottir lived in Fensalir, and the girl was loathe to leave. 

 

Sigyn was thirty seven years younger than the prince of Asgard. She had yet to start wearing a brazier and had confided that she was the only girl left in Lofn’s court who had not gotten her monthlies. When Loki had first met her, he’d sought out the goddess of forbidden love and asked her hand in marriage. Sigyn had just been adopted; her mother was a slave; an exotic mix of eldjotnar and midgardian, and she looked it. She had the most curious, piercing dark eyes when she’d been little more than a toddling babe. Lofn had looked at Loki curiously— this being when he was young enough for him to still be allowed in the Fensalir — and smiled. Sigyn got on well with Lofn, and not quite as well with Lofn’s husband.

 

His nurse had been telling him stories of forbidden romance, reading aloud to him her favorite novels (among them stories like “A Warrior and his Serf— A True Tale of Odin and Lough, a footboy,” “On the Seat of the Elf Queen Lies a Hungry Man Awaiting” and his personal favorite, “The Daring Half-Giant Steals his Bride”). In all of them, there was a young man wildly in love with a feisty or reluctant or powerful girl (or boy, his nurse didn’t particularly care for the lovers orientation, and Loki had never even noticed that a homosexual relationship was an illicit relationship until Thor cried ‘ew’ when he told him about it). Little Loki, back then, had fancied himself a protagonist, and decided that Sigyn would be the heroine. He would woo her. 

 

Unfortunately for him, Sigyn had never been particularly partial to being wooed by him..   

 

Either way, Lofn had allowed Loki into the Fensalir many times to see her slave, the little child’s ‘bride’ whenever he wished. When he grew too old to simply walk into, she carried him over with a wicked grin. And when he was too old for that, gangly and thin as he was, he mysteriously found “Beginner’s Guide to Mastering Your Talent” beneath his pillow one night. With his natural affinity for chaos and chance and shapeshifting— well, who was to say he had sophisticated any of it with the help of a book?

 

At first, Sigyn had hated Loki. He had snuck into all of her lady in waiting classes— Lofn had freed and adopted her, what need did a powerful asynja of Asgard have of a slave girl?— and promptly bested her at them. He was better at dancing, at singing, at writing poetry and prose, at weaving and spinning and accounting and diplomacy. Yet, only Sigyn knew the truth of the gaudily dressed young lady that stalked her through all her classes, for no one ever seemed to see Loki transform but her, and always when they were alone. 

 

He teased her, cruelly in front of all the other girls, for her reddish brown hair and brown skin, for her missing front teeth and quiet, stuttering countenance. Loki always seemed to know exactly what to say and when to say it, precocious even for one a few years older than her, and the words seemed to get caught in her throat until she felt them choking the life out of her. Her fingers fumbled and her strangeness made her an outcast even among Lofn’s little court of outcasts, but Loki’s strangeness never earned a word of reproach. It was as if no one else in the lessons ever saw the little rat lurking in their classes, clad in green and black, and if they did, they didn’t care, whereas Sigyn was constantly under the scrutiny of Frigga’s ladies. . 

 

But she was too shy to complain to Lofn of the injustice she suffered at the weaving loom. The sly glimmer in her patron’s eye said she knew better though. She was just waiting for Sigyn to get over whatever kept her from ratting out her tormentor. Lofn was a goddess of good humor, and being the only one privy to the prince’s female second identity besides Sigyn, liked to think it was just a little crush. Whatever she liked to think, she was not naive and knew better than to simply assume. So, she kept a careful eye on the situation. Sigyn was miserable, but not too miserable, and treated far more gently than the older goddess knew Loki was treated outside of his reprieves in Fensalir. 

 

Sigyn did not see this. She was kept inside the halls gilded walls of eternal spring. She wanted for absolutely nothing, except for Loki, the evil thing, to stop teasing her, to stop yanking on her hair and sneaking into her home and teasing her for her sub-par stupidity, for reminding her of all her flaws and inadequacies, for making her feel exactly how much someone like her didn’t belong in Asgard. 

 

She knew. She knew it when her hands got hot when she was mad, her anger dull and easily diffused, like weak sparks doused in a single bout of cold water. She knew it when she was exempt from trying out the latest styles and the latest products all the other girls cooed and squealed over because they looked strange on her complexion or wouldn’t work for her thick,densely curled hair. She knew it when the nursemaids tsked and scolded her for not properly combing her hair because it destroyed their delicate little brushes. She knew it when the other girls complained about the cycles every proper asynja had while her own body delayed, stuck with the figure of a little girl, chubby and short and squat while the other girls grew tall and lean and beautiful. 

 

Sigyn did not even pretend she wasn’t bothered. Were she a crueler person, she would have turned her hatred outward, towards the shallow young ladies that ensured her life was a living hell rather than herself. 

 

Loki was not like the other girls, though. He took in Sigyn at her friendliest and her surliest alike; following her like a shadow. The other girls would laugh and leave, like she was a spectacle at a carnival; something to be gawked at, then left alone and ignored. Loki never let her be alone. His shadow was not a terrible one to have. Even at his most irritating, Sigyn knew  that if she kept the company of the strange little he-she wraith, no girl would come bother her, and Loki was surprisingly good company. 

 

Loki loved being the center of attention when he was there, so when he dogged Sigyn’s steps, it was like Sigyn didn’t exist. Sometimes it was nicer not to exist, if being seen only meant misery. If only Loki understood that.  

 

Where Sigyn was pleased to fade into the obscurity of the meek and average, Loki constantly extolled her virtues.

 

“My lady, your incantation was perfection! Such diction, such prose, such a beautiful voice!”

 

“My lady, your skin reminds me of the night sky above Asgard. Such a beast as myself can only hope that one day he is allowed to map your constellations.”

 

“My lady, you are wise beyond measure, and clever to boot.”

 

One day, when she was finished with her primary education and finally allowed to escape the heavenly confines of the Fensalir,she snapped. 

 

“Do you think you’re funny, making fun of me like that?” she asked congenially, as if she were commenting on the weather and not calling him out. 

 

He stopped abruptly— in his male form today, as he had eagerly volunteered to escort Sigyn around Gladsheim. Sigyn bumped into him. 

 

“I’ve never made fun of you,” he said, puzzled. “I meant everything I’ve ever said.”

 

She snorted. “No, you didn’t.”

 

Much to her surprise, rather than becoming defensive or angry, he smiled. “If you want to believe that, than fine, I guess.”

 

“Liar,” she scowled, gathering up her skirts. Long trains were in fashion now, and Sigyn had never hated them more as Loki, with his longer legs caught up to her increased speed easily. “Leave me alone.”

 

“I mean it, my lady,” Loki said, ‘I just thought…”

 

“Well, don’t think,” she snapped, face hot. “Just...the way you talk about me in front the ladies...don’t do it please. It’s cruel.”

 

Now she could see hurt in his pale eyes, and it made her feel irrationally terrible. “I...people call me cruel when I’m rude, and they call me cruel when I am kind. I thought ladies liked language like that.”

 

“It’s cruel because you don’t mean it, and you say it like you do.”

 

His cool hand snaked out and grasped her own, and he glanced down at her, face painfully open. “I...what if I told you everything I said, I meant? I just really wanted to be your friend.”

 

“There are better ways to do that than gross exaggeration and false faces, my lord.”

 

He rolled his eyes. “How many times must I ask you to call me Loki?”

 

“It wouldn’t be proper,” Sigyn sniffed haughtily. “You’re the prince.”

 

“Very well Lady Lofndottir,” he replied just as stiffly, although the small wicked smile tugging at his thin lips belayed his amusement. Slowly, his face faded back into seriousness. “What would you have me do? In all seriousness. I do not wish to lead you on, for you have seen me as a man and as a woman, you have seen me weave and dance and practice seithr. You have seen more of me in truth than anyone but Thor. I thought I was helping when I praised you.”

 

“You do not need to exalt me any more than I do you,” she said, “You have ever been my friend, even as you drive me to madness. And that’s all I need from you--just be my friend Loki. Don’t rain upon me falsities and expect me to thank you for it.”

He ducked his head, abashed, for a split second before a small grin twitched his lips again. “I can do that.”

 

Relief washed over Sigyn, and propriety be damned, she squeezed Loki’s hand back. “...Good. I’m glad we have that resolved.”

 

“Indeed.”

 

They walked on in companionable silence. 

**Author's Note:**

> For moonship, who first expressed interest in more, and BlackburnTheFox, who asked for Sigyn and Loki meeting about a year ago. I'm a spectacularly slow writer. Drop a comment!


End file.
